


To Here Knows When

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [116]
Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 12:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12132732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: for craftysquidz, who prompted: 12/delgado!master, some h/c in the form of talking things out + maybe cuddling, takes place before 12 meets Missy. The two accidentally bump into each other on neutral ground (like a bar, y'know, but it doesn't have to be a bar? A place where 12 isn't being righteous and the master isn't being evil, they've both just come to this place bc they want to and the other just happens to be there). 12 is like oh shit the timelines, the master can tell this doctor is far older than him. As he has not met missy yet, 12’s most recent memories of the master are of simm, who is far more unstable and violent. 12 is jumpy around this version of the master even though it hasn’t happened for him yet. Delgado can tell something is off, asks him about it- even though they’ve had their spats, the doctor has never been this nervous around him. Aforementioned talking things out and h/c ensues





	To Here Knows When

Oh, look: there he is again. He’s absolutely everywhere, a sloppy mess strewn across the universe. Leaving a trail of shit and/or smarmy egotistical do-gooder nonsense in his wake. _The Doctor._

The Master realizes he’s said that last bit out loud when the barkeep looks at him strangely. “Move along, nothing to see here,” he says, putting some oomph into it. The barkeep moves on.

Not any face he’s met yet, or at least he thinks so - timelines, paradoxes, it’s all a bit of a jumble on the best of days. But he is fairly certain that this one is new. To him, to the world at large. All raw post-regeneration energy, lived with a bit but not fully dissipated. The uncertainty with how he operates his own skin and bones. And a face as striking as that, the Master would like to think he’d remember seeing it before.

His glass is empty but the barkeep is doing a thorough job of following his suggestion. He picks it up, savors the last few drops, staring through to this new Doctor. Alone, apparently. Nursing a half-full glass of something brown. The timeline is creaking around them. This is wrong, the two of them here. It’d be wronger still for them to actually meet.

Thankfully, neither of them have ever had much time for rules. The Master takes advantage of the barkeep’s resolute, studied avoidance to duck behind the counter and grab a bottle of something very old and very expensive, and makes his way over to the Doctor.

The music and the crowd growing louder, too loud, and it doesn’t matter. Might as well be silent, here, now, between the two of them. The world dropping out, just as it always has, despite his best efforts.

 _You_ , the Doctor says. Mentally but clear enough it could have been spoken aloud.

 _And you._ The Master is slightly disappointed: the Doctor’s traditional obliviousness to the Master’s presence when under the thinnest of disguises has always been a great source of joy. No disguise now, though. However: a great deal of time.

Far, far too much time. The wrong kinds of time. There’s a Gordian knot of tragedy, atrocity, violence, and so, so much time sitting at the center of the Doctor. The Master feels unusually young and untarnished, comparatively speaking - he does not, of course, let on.

He fills up his glass and tops off the Doctor’s. “I haven’t seen you in centuries. Still insufferable, I trust?”

“Last time I saw you, you were committing suicide by Chancellery Guard.” The Doctor’s tone is flat, brusque. He’s staring straight ahead, at the wall of bottles glinting bright in the spot lighting.

“I imagine I had a plan,” the Master says.

 _Think you just wanted to die, which was better than you deserved_ , the Doctor bleeds out, seemingly unwillingly. “Always do,” he says out loud. “So what brings you to town? Genocide? Apocalypse? Another cunning plan?”

“There’s an interesting paleontology exhibit involving what are probably vortisaurs at the local otherwise-worthless backwater-town museum; I had some spare time. I’m specifically here in this bar because I wanted a drink and it had good Yelp reviews. Yourself?”

The Doctor curls in on himself, simultaneously ready to withstand a fight and itching for flight. Knuckles gone white wrapped around the glass. “Avoiding responsibilities. Hiding. Trying to get drunk.” He takes a deep drink of the scotch - such a waste, such things are to be savored - and slams the glass back down on the counter. “S'not working.”

He’s got the expression, the body language, the mental presence like he’s in the company of a ghost, and like he’s not even bothering to process that completely, and like he’s daring and/or begging the Master to do something, anything. Jittery, cocky, half-flung into whatever void. It’s half-familiar and half completely and unsettlingly foreign.

The Master swirls his glass, watching the light play off the liquid. “Something happened,” he assumes. The timeline, again. Some questions should not be asked.

“You could say that.” For all he declared his sobriety, the words are slurred, and when the Master glances over his eyes are unfocused, watery.

Pushing his half-full glass towards the barkeep (still dutifully ignoring him) and screwing the cap back onto the bottle (and then squirreling it away into his deceptively voluminous coat pocket), he stands up, claps the Doctor firmly on the back. “Good to see you again, my dear, but I must be off. Til next time?”

 _Come with me_ , he thinks. Putting some English on it, turning it up loud enough for even the weakest telepath to hear.

“Yeah. Til the next time.” The Doctor’s still staring directly at whatever imagined middle-distance. Maybe his eyes flicker over, just for a split-second. Maybe.

The Master leaves, carving a path straight through the crowd. He waits for a while, outside the door, the fresh air hitting him harder than he would have expected or liked; waits just long enough to be sure the Doctor is following him.

 

 

He could kill the Doctor. Loose and elsewhere as he is, it wouldn’t take much. It never does happen, though. The Master makes a mistake, the Doctor has a stroke of good luck. Or vice versa. One way or another, neither of them ever wins. Or loses. Neither of them ever dies.

The Doctor stumbles along behind him. Does he know he’s this much? This violent spill-out, harsh and brash, all live-wire energy? Probably not, self-awareness was never his strong suit.

“Let me guess. You’ve infiltrated the local…fish people, and you’re using them as leverage to stage a coup on the palace, which will enable you to be Queen of Hell for all eternity.”

“Like I said. The natural history museum here has a fantastic exhibit of vortisaur skeletons.”

They reach the front door of the house the Master may or may not have killed one or more people to acquire, and may or may not be now technically squatting in. He pulls out his keys, the metal jingling. The Doctor stares at him, unfathomable, endless and slightly pathetic and brutally focused.

“Didn’t know you were capable of existing in anything other than a castle or a crypt,” the Doctor says, looking at the Master like he can see completely through him, and like he’s managing to not see anything at all.

“Needs must,” the Master says, opening the door to the modest terraced home, sliding the keys back into his pocket, alongside the stolen scotch, and closing the door behind them.

 

 

Once inside, the Doctor seems entirely more sober. Nervous, wary, nosy. Opening drawers and pawing through bookcases. Leaving things knocked off on the ground, like an especially petulant cat.

The Master goes to put the kettle on for tea. It’s only polite, after all. He leaves the scotch in his pocket for a rainy day. They’re both drunk enough, wouldn’t do to go overboard here.

“I’m more for coffee, these days,” the Doctor calls out. There’s a muffled thump, and then a muffled curse, and a brief burst of activity. “Extra-sweet.”

“I don’t have any coffee, I’m afraid.” He considers pulling out his best biscuits - this Doctor is whipcord-lean but he’s always had a sweet tooth, they would undoubtedly be appreciated - but it seems a bit too _much_. Too homey. A normal thing for normal people. And besides, he’s run low, and what’s left he’d rather keep for himself. He closes the cupboard door, saving the Hobnobs for the future.

There’s another round of crash-noises and invectives and the Doctor appears in the doorway to the kitchen, hair on end, breathless. “You gonna kill me?” he asks. The question seems to be genuine.

He considers. Maybe. Possibly. Right now? No. “Potentially,” he says, pouring the boiling water into two mismatched mugs. The Doctor nods, distracted, watching the steam rise.

 

 

They’re drinking tea, normal as you like. The Master with a pleasingly angular, modernist sort of contraption, black with lemon; the Doctor with a Sports Direct mug filled alarmingly close to the brim with milk and sugar. It’s an absurd situation. The timeline is straining around them; if he does want to or plans on killing the Doctor, it won’t work out. It never does. 

And besides, the Doctor feels as much like luck and ashes as he ever has. More so, too much so. Clinging to life out of spite and a clumsy, unacknowledged self-assurance; unkillable, unknowable. The bastard’s been hanging on by the skin of his teeth and the confidence of an old-blood Time Lord for as long as the Master can remember. That contradiction of a Lungbarrow orphan, both privileged and left for dead. And now: like that’s happened over and over and over again. 

Plus, apparently, a whole entire war (or two) and then some other hinted-at things; the Master does not ask for, as the Doctor would call them, ‘spoilers’. The Doctor is babbling, as is expected; insults, braggadocio, stream-of-consciousness asides. It’s almost charming. The Master is, despite himself, nearly charmed.

In a moment which may be described as weakness, the Master reaches out, puts his hand on the Doctor’s wrist, when he’s looking especially broken and like he doesn’t realize that _oh, and the last time I died_ is not anything meant to be said in a normal, casual tone of voice - he puts his hand on the skin exposed when the Doctor’s cuffs ride up on a dramatic gesture at the tail-end of an especially excited sentence.

Mistake. A misjudgment. The Master internally rolls his eyes as the Doctor slaps his hand away.

“Don’t,” he snaps. Voice hoarse, more high-pitched than it’s been these past few hours. Stands up, takes two steps back, vibrating like he’s trying to shake right out of his skin. A look in his eyes like part of him is somewhere else entirely.

The Master holds his hands by his shoulders, palms open, placating. _No threat here, see?_ “That’s changed as well, then?” He does not betray the mix of insult, disappointment, a certain undefinable sense of loss-to-come.

“I beg your pardon?” The anxiety and distance drift closer to a more familiar absent-mindedness. Familiar in a slightly wrong way, though, as if he’s flipping through a list of all the people he’s been and trying to decide which one he’s meant to be now.

“You used to like it when I touched you.”

The Doctor huffs a breath roughly through his nose: a laugh, nearly. “Yeah. That. Ah, d'you remember, when we were kids?”

Most of it, yes. The Master waits patiently, mentally sorting through and cataloguing how the familiarity has slipped into something more particular. Cadence, accent, the way the Doctor is holding himself now.

“They said I had a natural aptitude, for the.” He gestures at his head. “Psychic stuff. And then they said I had no discipline, couldn’t control it, and they were right. Think I made it to one of the workshops. Out of fifteen. Passed on the second go, though, got there eventually. But it’s like that, now. Again. Touch a damn rock, I can feel it, all of it. Touch anything sentient - well. And you…”

Poor thing, that’s an unprecedented amount of sharing in general and it appears to be especially overmuch for this one. Must’ve taken it out of him, the dear. The Master tries to not overtly, pruriently enjoy the raw, raspy, cracked desperation in the Doctor’s voice.

(And there’s more there, more than just that admission. The way the Doctor is looking at him, scared, judgmental; something will happen there. He chooses not to push. What will come, will come. No sense getting tangled up in the will-be’s.)

“I could put my gloves on,” the Master says. And maybe he can enjoy it, just a bit. “You used to like it when I wore gloves.”

The Doctor laughs again, a touch more genuine this time. “I did, yeah.”

“We had fun, didn’t we,” the Master says, chuckling with only the barest, most delicate amount of Evil Charm. He stretches out, hands settling down by his sides: on the edge of his perception, the softest of mental brushes, he can feel the Doctor blaring out indiscriminately on all channels. The confused dread, the self-loathing, the bit-down-on panic; a snapshot of the Master’s gloved hand closing around his throat, around the cock he’d apparently bumbled into giving himself, pale and reedy as the rest of him (the Doctor had never been any good at the very basic task of choosing a goal during regeneration, but he’d previously chanced once or thrice on a version of the far superior interior genitalia; not this time, apparently).

In this moment of tender vulnerability, the Master politely only spends approximately 15% of his attention on what’s between the Doctor’s legs. He isn’t an animal. And he can sense that the blatant eroticism is, if not exactly forced, then something born more out of nostalgia - out of familiarity - than anything the Doctor truly wants.

So.

The Master withdraws as he moves his physical body closer. The Doctor flinches, but stands his ground, a predictable ‘go on I dare you’ expression on his face. The Master retrieves his gloves from his coat pocket - the Doctor flinches again, and speaking of nostalgia: that skittish _fuck-off/fuck you/fuck me/fuck this_ wildness is erasing the outlines of this Doctor and leaving a small, defiant Thete in their wake.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” the Master says.

The Doctor exhales. Disappointed? Relieved? Something else entirely? “Didn’t say you would.”

“But I would like - ” The Master breathes in carefully, leaning only just against the spiky edge of what the Doctor is. “Forgive me. I’ve become sentimental in my relative old age. And I’ve missed you.” He says it like he means it, and potentially he does mean it, but there’s enough camp and irony there for it to not mean anything at all. “May I hold your hand?”

The Doctor stares at him, eyes wide, brows furrowed. The tea’s going cold, the Master is losing his patience.

“When you knew me,” the Doctor starts. Very carefully, enunciating clearly in that accent he has now. “Was I a good man?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” the Master says. Fantastic, more ego-stroking.

“Because I’m not entirely sure, now. Of either of those.” The Doctor is still staring, and he’s so open and vulnerable and, in the cheap lighting of this cheap house, impossibly beautiful, and he’s, what, looking for the Master’s approval?

He tries not to appreciate that too much. Closes a firm mental fist around whatever it is that’s building up inside him. In the both of them. “You are eternally, obnoxiously ‘good’.”

This is maybe the right answer. The Doctor doesn’t quite relax, but when the Master extends their hand in the human fashion, the Doctor takes it, and then lets himself be pulled forward. The Master’s arm around him, the Doctor leans against his chest, head tucked under his chin, nuzzling against the fabric of his coat.

It should be embarrassing. It is embarrassing, a bit, but it’s also…nice? Ammunition, for sure, the next time he comes up against the Doctor. _Remember that time you wanted to cuddle?_

He should say something, now. Make a move. He has his plans. But they can wait, surely. He can bide his time. And, Rassilon help him, he can’t quite bring himself to hurt Thete. Not now, not like this, not when he’s clinging to him like an angry limpet. So he leads him to the bedroom, pulls the covers back, glares just hard enough for Thete to get his boots off at least, and then tucks the two of them in. At a safe distance, his hands nearby but not touching, his face close but not too close. The Doctor looks like he’s torn between fear and a long-lost sense of peace.

“We’ll forget this,” the Master reminds him. “So why not just enjoy it?”

“This, yeah. Whatever it is,” he mutters. “Probably a scheme. Bet you’d like me forgetting it, so you can go do your dastardly deeds without me trying to stop you.” But he breathes out, and the edges of him soften, and they are almost, almost holding hands.

( _Either of those_ , he’d said. He’d been a girl, once. The Master rolled the pronouns around in his head, trying to come up with the right word for this arsehole currently curled up and sighing, squirming incrementally towards him. The Doctor shifts around, and nudges their back against the Master’s chest, and then they both briefly black out; the idiot never did know how to regulate their telepathy.)


End file.
